Asif Iqbal is a quiet, but funny and quick-witted 25 year old British man of Indian descent who was detained illegally in Guantanamo Bay prison for 2 and ½ years before his government was finally able to obtain his release.

Why did Bush wait until the start of a new Democratic Congress to announce his death warrant on American GIs?

Part of it, no doubt, was that Cheney needed time to fire the vocally dissenting generals, whip the Joints Chiefs of Staff – who unanimously opposed the idea – into silence, and try to figure out a way to find additional cannon fodder to send to their doom, since the military and reserves have been so depleted by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Iraq war folly.

It is now estimated that more than 3500 people attended the 2007 Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee, January 12-14.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated not far from the Memphis Conference Center where the conference is finishing up.

It was noted by more than one speaker that the Civil Rights Movement – and the protests against the Vietnam War – might not have succeeded if the media had not transmitted the horrible images and stories from those two tumultuous clashes.

Having attended the three Media Reform conferences sponsored by FreePress.net over the last few years, BuzzFlash is profoundly optimistic that the harmful and insidious "news [propaganda] frame" created by the corporate media may be countered by a grassroots movement of activists.

It wasn't Katrina, not even close, but Seattle's storm of the century was no picnic. It gave me one more a taste of a future where the weather can suddenly turn--and destroy the habitability of our world. The storm hit Seattle mid-December with pounding rain and 70 mile-an-hour winds, reaching 110 miles per hour, 35 miles to the east, on the slopes of the Cascade Mountains. The ground was already soggy from the wettest November in Seattle history, and as the wind and rain uprooted trees, many fell on houses and cars, blocked roads and took down local power lines, cutting off heat and light to over a million residents in the city and surrounding areas. Thirteen people died. Sanitation systems overflowed, dumping tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage into Puget Sound. A week later, nearly a hundred thousand people were still living in the cold and the dark. Although my own lights stayed on, the next street was dark, and I could drive ten minutes and pass block after block of blackened houses. Those affected joked at first about sleeping with mittens and down parkas, then grew increasingly testy as gas stations couldn't pump gas, supermarkets were closed and what seemed at first a brief interruption turned into days without the basics of modern human existence. Now, a month later, the last residences are finally getting back their phone services. And 29,000 people just lost power again from yet another Seattle storm.

The majority of Americans are clearly against escalating the war in Iraq; Bush was advised against it by the military generals; the Democrats in the Democratically-controlled Congress are unified against it, and now even Republicans have begun to express their opposition; the troops have already been spent and their morale is low. But despite all these indisputable facts, Bush has gone ahead with his plan to deploy more than twenty-one thousand additional troops to Iraq anyway. The most shocking fact of all, however, is not Bush's arrogant disregard for the will of the American people. It is rather that it could well have been predicted in light of the facts surrounding his administration. These facts paint a dismal, coherent picture of a burgeoning dictatorship in America. Unfortunately, this story (but for a piecemeal, fragmented, censored version) never saw the light of day in the mainstream media.

If there is one thing Bush cares about more than pacifying Iraq (to get oil easier), it's protecting his legacy. With the war doomed to failure, he has used the "surge" plan as a means to defer blame onto others regardless of what the Democrats plan to do about the proposed strategy.

New York, New York: In the aftermath of President Bush's prime-time war cry for escalation from the White House Library, the network newscasters were skeptical about his chances for success but seemed to be impressed by his willingness to stand up for what they think he believes, like some lone but gutsy hero on the prairie.

Much of the commentary deals with him as the beleaguered leader standing strong against public opinion but doing what he feels he had to do. The subtext was you just have to admire that man. This is the very positioning his image managers cultivated.

After all is said and done, this seems so easy, but it hasn't been easy. It's been an uphill battle for years and there was no need for it. Bush was so cavalier in telling Americans to go shopping, but he didn't give a damn if they were confined to only window shopping. It's a shame that we have to celebrate something that should have been done long ago and is just another one of those things that is the right thing to do. Imagine, people working for such pittance and a GOP Congress, in the past, never missed a vote for giving themselves a raise. How many people get to do that when they work for somebody. Good for the Democrats and their 100 hour goals, but to really fix all of the damage to this country and our government that has been done by this treasonous Bush regime . . . we can't fool ourselves, it will take years.